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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

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Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#211

Post by eru »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #159
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but our "big salary" is still like half of what they'd pay in the USA. Perhaps the company doesn't see it worthwhile to argue over peanuts.

Paying a given salary in Germany is a lot more expensive for a company than paying the exact same salary in America. There are both more taxes on the employer side and more labor regulations that cost money to comply with. The number of hours worked tends to be different, too.

The wedge between gross and net pay is indeed big in Germany.

Btw, it's getting bigger in the US as well over the least few decades.

Singapore is a place with a smaller gap, and less regulation. That's part of the reason they went from third world to first world.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#212

Post by autoexec »

Aeolun wrote: post #171
michaelscott wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. It makes the process of salary negotiation completely tied to perception rather than reality, which isn't necessarily bad for the employee. It just means that the justifications for a higher salary need to change from "your salary offer is too low because it shouldn't depend on where I live" to "your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z"

I think the tried and true “Your salary offer is too low compared to your competitors, or what I can do for myself” is pretty much fine right?

Until the moment companies once again collude to drive and hold prices down. Suddenly those competitors aren't too low after all and the "tried and true" isn't so useful.

Corporations have enough staff that they can lay off hundreds or thousands of workers without a single worry. They can hold out not paying you the rate you want for much longer than you can afford not paying your bills and eating. Eventually, you will accept a lower salary and if you don't there are plenty of others who will. The vast majority of all employed people have next to no leverage compared to the companies that hire them and companies know it.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#213

Post by RHSeeger »

dkersten wrote: post #113
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. There are perfectly valid reasons why that's not the case, see here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation... https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...

I don’t buy it. Most of their reasons are why it’s better for them and not why it benefits the employees. The employees are still being discriminated against for living in low cost of living areas by being valued at less, regardless of what their final disposable income is. For example, moving to a low cost of living area is something I did as a choice so that I could save more, and this came with a cost: my friends…

And if someone moved to a high cost of living area because they wanted to make more, is that different in some way? Would not paying them the amount for a similar quality of life not be the same type of discrimination?

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#214

Post by bryanrasmussen »

eru wrote: post #207
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Market" is just another way of saying "Power differential." Most corporate cultures are inherently authoritarian, with money being used as a proxy for power. Empirically there is plenty of evidence that given a choice, many businesses would rather maintain the power differential and complain about "lack of applicants" than increase pay and suffer a corresponding diminution of authority. Stock is an even more specifi…

> Empirically there is plenty of evidence that given a choice, many businesses would rather maintain the power differential and complain about "lack of applicants" than increase pay and suffer a corresponding diminution of authority. Why does any company every pay more than the legally required minimum, then?

if you have 0 employees and nobody will work for you until you raise your pay to three times the legally required minimum, you raise because otherwise there is no power differential.

If you have 10 employees and you want to hire 3 more but to do that you have to increase their pay by 25% in relation to others then you might decide not to because this decreases power for everyone (should they find out what you're paying these others)

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#215

Post by bsenftner »

eru wrote: post #205
bsenftner wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But eventually the market forces will do their thing. After you're necessity for that market equalization is long gone. We're in a situation where the wealth class can literally wait it out for more than a generation for market conditions they prefer to normalize. The Market is manipulated and owned, and not by us. The tipping point is past, and the majority of society has yet to realize, our only hope at this poin…

Huh? What's your evidence for these kinds of claims? And who is 'us' in that comment?

Anyone not within the circle of a family with generation spanning wealth.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#216

Post by eru »

zahrc wrote: post #125
rizach8 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so foreign to me, living in Europe. The salary here is in my experience based on where the company is located. Big city, big salary.

Of course there might be exceptions, but isn’t it reasonable to expect that companies in bigger cities have more business and can therefore pay more?

That would only really make sense for the location of the sales office, I guess?

Where you put your developers shouldn't make much of a difference to how much business you have?

However you are up to something: big cities tend to be more productive. That's the reason people and businesses put up with the higher rents and other inconveniences. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#217

Post by swah »

MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

My current employer uses a formula that adjusts between NY cost of living and local cost of living, half way. Found it super generous (unexpected) to be honest...

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#218

Post by bombolo »

steve1977 wrote: post #111

Why is work seen as a gift? In german, they employer is the "Arbeitgeber", i.e. the "work giver", while the employee is the "Arbeitnehmer", the "work taker". Which is really wrong IMHO. The employee is giving his work to the employer.

In Italy I've heard company owners say: "I feed X families".

Wrong… you mean they feed you.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#219

Post by eru »

yxhuvud wrote: post #99
MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. What, no! It should be about what offers you can get from other places. If your offer is close to your local salaries, then that mean the company thinks you would have a hard time getting a better offer from somewhere else.

It's a bit more complicated.

For example, I can get x$ from Google, but that doesn't mean SAP or ASML should also pay me x$: I don't know anything about their respective ecosystems, so I wouldn't be able to contribute much of value.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#220

Post by ericmay »

franciscop wrote: post #66
MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

While it is true, the best you can do is vote with your feet. I have had the situation where I was offered "locally competitive salaries" (not in the USA though), and every time I've rejected it I had a 50%-100% better offer within few weeks . There ARE companies that will pay better and independently of your location, you do need to be good though (as in companies are proactively seeking you out) and keep searching.…

I’m really surprised that nobody has set up address as a service yet so that you can claim for example to live in New York by virtue of an address auto command “a New York salary”.
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